Feb. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Pressing to move quickly to rewrite
the nation’s immigration laws, Democratic leaders began setting
a strategy to advance legislation as the White House worked to
rally business support.

Returning to a tactic used in last year’s fiscal fight,
administration officials held a conference call with executives
of some of the nation’s largest companies to lay out President
Barack Obama’s proposals and to enlist corporate backing.

At the Capitol, Senate Democratic leaders expressed
confidence that Congress would pass immigration legislation now
that a bipartisan group of House lawmakers plans to introduce a
proposal as early as this month.

“We believe that they’re moving along on a set of
principles that will be fairly similar to ours, not completely
the same,” Senator Charles Schumer of New York, the chamber’s
third-ranking Democrat and a leader of the immigration-rewrite
effort, told reporters yesterday.

Obama said this week that he wants to see the legislation
passed by mid-year. That sets an ambitious schedule for Congress
on an issue that has drawn bipartisan support in the past, only
to be blocked by opposition to giving some of the estimated 11
million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. a chance at
citizenship. Proponents of changing immigration laws are
counting on a political shift driven by a demonstration of
Hispanic voting power in the November election.

“The president will continue this engagement with outside
groups next week,” Carney said, declining to elaborate or
provide a full list of those on the call.

Representatives from Microsoft Corp., Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
and the banking and financial services industry also took part
in the half-hour discussion with Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett
and National Economic Council Director Gene Sperling, according
to a participant who requested anonymity to discuss a private
conversation.

The executives were generally supportive of a single
comprehensive bill, rather than addressing immigration with more
focused separate measures, as some Republicans have advocated,
according to the call participant.

Skilled Workers

Several executives emphasized the importance of expanding
the number of visas available to highly skilled foreign workers,
such as engineers, financial analysts and programmers. Jarrett
and Sperling encouraged them to stress the importance of the
issue to their employees, the participant said.

Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat
and an author of a bipartisan Senate framework unveiled this
week, said the business community could play “a critical role”
in building support for the effort, particularly among
Republicans.

“To have a Democratic president reaching out and engaging
the business community really creates a bipartisan force,” he
said.

Deciding what metrics should be used to determine when
adequate steps have been taken to secure the border, laying out
the path to citizenship and getting business groups and labor
unions to endorse a plan are among the “thorny” issues that
Senate negotiators need to tackle, Schumer said.

Guest-Worker Plan

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said this week that
a stronger guest-worker program to help regulate low-skilled
laborers for agriculture and other industries must be included
in any bill he could support.

“We need a good guest-worker program. The one we have now
is not working very well,” the Kentucky Republican said in an
interview with Yahoo! News released today. “So there’s a
practical reality to needing a guest-worker program, and I’m
sure that will be a part of the final bill.”

Still, Schumer said he was confident that there are
Republicans in the Senate who would back a broad rewrite of
immigration law.

“Will the House be harder than the Senate? Probably,” he
said. If a “large number” of Senate Republicans support the
measure, “we think that will encourage the House not only to go
forward but to pass a bill.”

House Bill

The House group working on a bill includes Republican
Representatives Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida, John Carter and
Sam Johnson of Texas and Raul Labrador of Idaho, along with
Democrats Zoe Lofgren and Xavier Becerra of California and Luis
Gutierrez of Illinois.

Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan, the former Republican
vice presidential candidate, also has participated in the
discussions.

“I’ve talked to leadership about this issue, and Speaker
John Boehner understands that we have to fix the broken
immigration system,” Diaz-Balart said in an interview. “I am
pretty sure that if there was a bipartisan bill filed by some
members of the House I think the leadership would probably be
interested in trying to bring it to a vote.”